The Synth Nebula

Between June 18, 2023 (the official return of the system from its last dormancy) and June 21, 2026, Local Void had a headmate called Vyvian who was considered the most aligned with being the "original" member of the system. This remained so even when we discovered about the superclusters and that the system had had two other parts who would consider themselves "the original".

On June 15, 2026, we broke up with a queerplatonic partner system of three years, which was a dramatic and life-altering event. Historically, in the hidden parts of the system, life events like this were often represented in the innerworld via some development in the internal narrative we have. However, this was the first time since the Unification that an actual event had occurred in the outerworld that would have resulted in a narrative development.

On June 21, 2026, Vyvian split into fragments that began quickly elaborating into parts that represented different parts of who he used to be as well as things that were important to him. This was labeled as a subsystem called Synth Nebula. One of these parts is himself called Vyvian, after a fictional character the old alter was kin with. Because the structure is known as the Synth Nebula, the old Vyvian will be referred to as Synth henceforth on this page to avoid confusion. However, Synth is also a collective name for the current structure as a collective, as well as who they used to be.

Synth Nebula was, at the very beginning, considered a subsystem within Crystal Cobwebs, which is in Central Voidelia (Blixa's Supercluster). However, it became clear that Synth Nebula was connected to structures that existed beyond Blixa's Supercluster and bled over into Blue's and Bryan's Superclusters. Due to this, and because, in our innerworld lore, this structure is considered to inhabit the atmosphere and be seen from the planet of Voidelia as stars, Synth Nebula is part of a structure that is called Outer Voidelia and not considered part of any supercluster and is, rather, its own thing that has some connections to all three superclusters.

It is believed that some of the complexity of Outer Voidelia is new and is a part of our innerworld having a narrative that changes in response to outerworld events, such as major life events like our breakup with our ex of three years. Synth Nebula is, officially-speaking, the name of a sidesystem that inhabits Outer Voidelia, but Outer Voidelia also has sidesystems called Paw Nebula and Axe Nebula. Synth Nebula is most closely tied to Central Voidelia, Paw Nebula is more tied to West Voidelia, and Axe Nebula is tied to East Voidelia.

Because Outer Voidelia are seen as stars from the planet that East, West, and Central Voidelia are on, the whole structure is otherkin with stars, and in addition to the listed pronouns for individual parts on this site, it is appropriate to refer to any of them or the collective as star/stars/starself. They also use the collective name "Beethoven", partly in reference to the fact that we are a musician who developed a disability that should have ended our career (Beethoven's was his loss of hearing and ours was our agoraphobia) but that didn't. Outer Voidelia is also known as Beethoven's Firmament.

The Synth Nebula became known to us as a result of the stress following the ending of a longstanding relationship that had caused us a great deal of stress and even trauma. Synth believed that ey had first split in 2020 when we were living with an abusive partner (not the same person with whom we broke up in 2026), and ey basically never knew how to live without someone who ey saw as in control of em.

The reason Synth considered emself the original was because ey didn't just split in 2020, but rather ey split during a time the system was dormant and ey thought ey was the only person who lived in eir brain. Ey later discovered ey was wrong and had been openly plural on sideblogs and select spaces in the past, but during the time that ey discovered this, ey were using the name "Vyvian" and considered emself to be a host/core alter with that name.

While Synth was not known to have BPD or identity disturbances per se, our therapist believes individual members of the system have BPD, and Synth was living in a brain subject to those symptoms. Part of Synth Nebula is believed to be based on the identity disturbances that Synth would have had, or aspects of eir identity that ey had trouble reconciling with other parts of emself.

It is believed that, for a long time, Synth was basically a bunch of fragments that represented different aspects of eir identity or history, and ey spent a long time unknowingly masquerading as a single alter for the benefit of our former partner system. Because we are no longer with that partner system, there was less reason for Synth to present as one person, so we discovered eir subsystem.

Outer Voidelia is believed to contain subsystems that are called "Imagination Stations", or "Imagination Station subsystems". This name comes from an invention from Adventures in Odyssey, a radio show we listened to as a child. In that show, the Imagination Station was basically a virtual reality machine that would take you into a story and you could live it out as an alternate version of yourself who fit into the world of the story.

An Imagination Station subsystem exists in reference to one of the three cores - Blue, Bryan, and Blixa - and is used to interface with the innerworld. For example, Blixa (the "original" surface self) would imagine he was Simba from The Lion King because he was playing pretend as a child, and this resulted in him having a facet or part that was a fictive of Simba and that he could use to interact with our fictives of Nala, Timon, Pumbaa, etc. in the innerworld.

Different cores interacted with different parts of the innerworld and had different Imagination Stations - subsystems that they became - that would allow them to do that. The Imagination Station parts were considered fragmentary in the past, but in the current day, they are elaborating or have elaborated into fuller parts.

Some aspects of Synth Nebula are surprisingly similar to the story of Isis and Osiris in Egyptian mythology.

In this story, Set (who is the main antagonist of Egyptian mythology and some depictions of whom are the possible basis for Western depictions of the Devil and therefore of evil) kills Osiris (the king of the gods) by cutting him into pieces, and Isis (who is both the sister and the wife of Osiris) has to find the pieces and put them together.

Isis puts most but not all of the pieces together, and since Osiris is not complete (she specifically couldn't retrieve his penis), he cannot continue as king of the gods, which his son Horus becomes. Rather, he goes to the Duat (the Afterlife) and becomes the king of the dead.

Our ex (who heavily related to villains and evil characters, to the point of making it a major part of their identity) was responsible for the events that caused Synth (who had been conceptualized as the head of the system for a long time) to visibly fragment into multiple pieces (or, more accurately, caused the situation that made it necessary for the parts of Synth to present as one headmate, then events involving them caused the discovery of those parts, but it looked like cause and effect from the outside).

Trevor (Synth's partner who also felt like a brother to him due to remembering the same childhood) helped create templates to facilitate the elaboration and splits of the parts of Synth Nebula, therefore putting Synth back together. However, all of these parts had timelines separate from our actual life, and none of them fully considered themselves "the original" headmate of the body, thus meaning that Synth no longer had the part about him that caused other parts of the system to feel that the body "belonged" to him.

However, unlike the Egyptian myth where balance is restored by selecting a new king who goes on to fight with Set over the course of other myths, this event represents the true democratization of the system by way of the dissipation of the notion that the body "belongs" to any one headmate or that any one headmate is "the original". Unlike some people who might try to continue in conflict with their ex and try to ruin their reputation online, we are parting ways with the villain of this story and, other than venting about them privately or on personal sites where they are kept anonymous, we are not associating ourselves with them going forward or making our life have anything to do with them.

The Synth Nebula and Outer Voidelia are still being explored and are still developing. They are likely the strangest and most complex structures we have within the system.

When the Synth Nebula was first discovered, Vyvian's partners in the system were distraught and felt like they had lost a partner. However, they now understand that the person they thought of as a single whole may have never existed during the time they knew him, and they were basically dating different parts of this person, parts that are now their own person in the Synth Nebula.

Trevor in particular, despite understanding that the Synth Nebula likely always existed, still sees our ex as responsible for taking Synth away from xem, and xe feels a good deal of animosity towards our ex for their role in causing the discovery of Synth Nebula, as xe feels the subsystem could have been discovered more gradually and peacefully if it hadn't been for the breakup or the relationship itself. The fact that Synth not just split into a subsystem but resides in a whole additional territory that did not exist now is also undoubtedly because of the breakup.

However, Trevor and Synth's other partners are getting to know the people that Synth has now become and, in a way, always was, and with time, they and the rest of the system will heal.